"I see..." Liu Qing's expression did not change in the slightest; he was entirely unmoved. "I think I understand. Let me put the question a different way, then. Suppose, Ji Zhao, that your grandmother were about to die an unnatural death for some reason, and that saving her required the lives of a hundred million people in the real world. Would you be willing to pay that price?"
"I don't entertain pointless hypotheticals," Ji Zhao said flatly. "And don't imagine you can use the answer to attack me on moral grounds from any angle whatsoever."
"At my age? I'm hardly going to do anything so childish." Liu Qing smiled indifferently. "But you did say you would stop at nothing. Even if it meant killing every person in this game, you would turn the Mirror. Correct?"
"Of course."
"And the reason... because everything there is fake?"
"Yes."
"Heh heh... Do you know, Ji Zhao, that among those who have crossed through the 'Mirror,' I am the second and you are the third — and that before us both there was a first?"
"...How would I know that unless you told me? This person failed?"
"Mn. He failed."
"I have no interest in the subject. But since you've raised it, I assume you have your reasons... Fine. I'll go on asking. How did he fail?"
"Heh heh... The First. He crossed into a world with no supernatural power in it — a raising game with a modern setting, most of its rules identical to real reality. So he set about building himself up by various means: plagiarizing other people's novels, laying heavy bets on sporting events, then using the money he made to start businesses. With his knowledge of what was coming, he made a great deal of money and tried to work both the legitimate and the criminal sides. After all, in a world without supernatural power, money alone cannot accomplish a great many things... But he was somewhat careless. Among the novels he plagiarized was one that would not be written for another five years — and what he did not know was that five years before that, its author had already been drafting the outline. Matching outlines alone would have meant little; the trouble was that every character name matched as well. It looked wrong from any angle, and it went to court."
"The case stirred up nothing at all, of course, since there was no trace of the author's computer having been broken into. But a few watchful people made note of it... and made note, along with it, of how the man won every wager he laid, and how even his losses never cost him anything that mattered."
"Years later, once he had made his name and his fortune, he began searching for the Mirror, and that inevitably drew a great deal of attention. At first this crowd used nothing but wiretaps, honey traps and drink, hoping to catch some glimpse of where his prophet's gift came from. He won every wager, every investment he touched turned a profit, and even the political figures he befriended rose straight to the top; it looked wrong from any angle... But bit by bit a small number of them realized just how wrong, and then they moved in earnest and had the First abducted."
"You will know something of modern interrogation methods. There is nothing they cannot get out of a man, only things he does not know... And so he told them everything about the 'Vessels.'"
Liu Qing stopped there and looked at Ji Zhao with open interest.
"Guess what happened next."
Ji Zhao answered without thinking. "Since they had him under control, he couldn't have escaped. So a descendant of his rang the Bell?"
"He had no descendants."
"Then he got himself free by some means or other?"
"No. He never got free."
"...Don't play word games with me. You know what I mean. It doesn't matter whether he got free — the Bell is a thing that can be used in captivity."
"He never rang the Bell."
"...?"
Ji Zhao froze, then said on reflex, "Let me think about it again..."
"The answer is very simple," Liu Qing said with a smile. "Take a locked room that appears impossible to crack, when in fact it is only a locked room in the mind, and the person who discovered it gave false testimony. The answer is that simple. But if you don't think along those lines, you could think yourself to death and never work out how to crack it..."
Ji Zhao frowned, yet no matter how he turned it over he could not think of any way the First might have rung the Bell.
Liu Qing shook his head. "Never mind. I won't keep you in suspense."
He paused. "This First — his name was Wu Feng."
Ji Zhao started. Wu Feng. He had heard that name: a famous entrepreneur of twenty years ago who had once been the richest man in the world, only to die young — at thirty-six he had...?
【"...?"】
【"Wait..."】
Ji Zhao's pupils contracted, and suddenly he could not speak.
Crossed over into another world... and was imprisoned there, and never escaped to the very end.
All at once he understood everything Liu Qing had said, and in that instant he felt as though he had dropped into a pit of ice, his very blood frozen solid.
Liu Qing kept his calm smile. "It seems you understand... Then let me say it in full."
"Wu Feng was his name in this world. His true name was Liang Xing. Do you remember the question you asked me earlier — why you, and why me?"
"First, why me. That's simple. I was picked out of thousands upon thousands: the strongest in overall ability, in adaptability, in capacity to learn."
"As for why you — because I chose you. But why would I choose you...? First, by the rules of the Mirror I cannot become that 'one thread of life' a second time; otherwise I would certainly have gone again myself. Second, I have already betrayed this world, and there is nothing here I am attached to any longer, so I did not give the chance to my family or friends or to anyone I trust, because that would have been meaningless... Forgive me, I'm wandering off the subject."
"So then, why you? For that we must go back to the very beginning."
"The game Liang Xing entered was called 《The War God Raising Plan》. It is a raising game in which the player takes the role of a sixteen-year-old youth named 'Ji Zhao' and, by developing himself, becomes the strongest fighter in 《Life and Death》..."
"That's right. The First was no native of this world of ours. He came from another world, an Earth with only eight billion human beings. Their world had no 《Life and Death》 — only a game called 《The War God Raising Plan》. Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — he pressed forward too eagerly, and he failed."
"And so the game 《The War God Raising Plan》 became the 'real,' and you, Ji Zhao, the protagonist of that game, became 'real' as well."
Liu Qing looked at Ji Zhao, who could no longer manage a single word, and smiled.
"But at bottom, this world is fake as well."
"If the eight hundred trillion on my side are fake, then the twelve billion here are fake too. Only the eight billion on the First's side are real."
"This world now, the immortal-cultivation world I lived through, and the wuxia world you are about to live through: there is no difference at all between the three. All of them are falsehoods that could only take shape by stealing the reality of the First's world."
"And so I — with nothing left to hold me, fated never to return to that cultivation world, and soon to be reduced to ash — chose you."
"Though it is only my own perverse taste... no, that word puts it too crudely. Let me say it this way instead: I chose you out of my own private aesthetics."
A smile of profound devilry surfaced on Liu Qing's face.
"Because you are the protagonist of this world. By the 'game settings' the First described, you possess the strongest talent for combat in this world; you are the most inconceivable martial prodigy in the universe, an asura-demon born to seize every victory this world has to offer... The fate of the 'world,' decided by its 'protagonist.' Nothing could be fairer than that, could it?"